Greeting, Leaguers,

Turkey Day is fast approaching.


a delicious looking turkey

Jamie and I are preparing for what will, hopefully, be a funfilled Holiday in which we can give thanks for all the good fortune of the year. Huzzah.
I love the turkey, but I've been vegetarian since August 19th. Not a bite of meat has passed through my lips since that day. But I love turkey! Seriously. Turkey and gravy. Absolutely love it. Jamie and I picked out a 14 pound turkey this weekend, and I wanted to do a little dance, so great is my love of the bird. But will i crack under the strain? Can I possibly go without turkey on a day in which drumsticks will be presented right before my nose? I cannot say.

Viva la turkey.

In regards to my paranoid rant about Christmas last week, as of Saturday night, one of my neighbors has already put up their Christmas lights. Holy cow, man. We aren't even done using the air conditioner and this bozo is laying tracks for Santa's runway on his roof.

Anyhoo, Laura Maxwell held a contest over on her blog. I was one of a few winners of the "Evil Deeds to Bestow Upon your Boss After You've Been Informed You're Laid Off But have Two Weeks Left to Go" contest. I received an "Attack of the CLones" clone-headed Pez-Dispenser. I love me the orange Pez. I also got candy cigarettes, an aluminum Dia De Los Muertos skeleton and a general showering of good will. Thanks, Maxwell! You're tops!

Solicitations for upcoming Superman stories for February have been released. Check out this art! I am so pumped. Also here and here.

DC Comics has not been putting out what I would describe as A+ Superman stories this year, but this looks interesting, and 2004 is scheduled to have some top flight writers and artists. Could be a good year to be a Superman fan.

I was not a good student in college. Seriously. THis may surprise you, faithful Leaguers, but I had a little trouble focusing on my studies. Hence, my GPA coming out of college was nothing to crow about. And so the trend continues. I completely bombed my exam last night in the class I'm taking. I have no idea how I could have studied better, but my capacity for retaining knowledge such as I am being tested on is nil. Let's hope the group project pulls my fat out of the fire.

Sometime in 8th grade I did my usual routine of flipping past any actual news in the newspapers and headed straight for the funnies page. At the time the paper still carried strips like Apartment 3G, Steve Roper and other soap opera strips. For some reason, I started to follow Mary Worth. I have no idea why, but from 8th to 11th grade, I read Mary Worth almost every morning while i was having my cereal and juice. In 12th grade I gave up on breakfast so i could get more sleep, and with that, my love affair with MAry Worth came to an end.

Honestly, I have almost no recollection of anything in Mary Worth, except that it would take two weeks for her to make it across the room. Storylines would take literally a year to complete and usually were not very satisfactory. But then again, it was a strip about a lady living in some sort of Retirement Community.

At any rate, the art was always good, and the stories were consistent, if not thrilling. But I read today that the brianchild behind Mary Worth had died.

The Arizona Republic has a worse comics section than the Lawton Constitution, so I don't read any strips anymore. But it was always nice in those days to know that a nice lady was there to have cereal with me every morning.

Oh, irony of ironies.

I called my dad on Saturday to dispense with the usual weekend parental chat and he sounded all chipper.

"I just found your web page!" says the old man.
"My web page...?"
"Your cousin called and she gave us directions on how to find your web page! I'm reading it right now!"
"Oh, Sweet Christmas..."
"Ho ho! You don't want your old man reading your web page!"
"Well, I, you know... I'm as excited about this as when you and mom found cigarettes in my drawer."
"Huh. Well, better keep it clean, Bub! Your mother and I know how to find you now! Ho ho ho!"
"So Susan found the web-site and ratted me out, huh?"
"Yup! She called us right up!"
I love my cousin. I really do. She's a wee little Occupational Therapist in Austin who helps developmentally challenged kids learn how to use their muscles and stuff by way of games and exercises. But this year, as revenge, she will be getting nothing for her birthday. When she will be 29. Again.
My Dad also pointed out that my grandpa did not use a glider to enter Europe on D-Day. I think my brother just made that up based on something from Band of Brothers. Apparently Grandpa Marvin Ross parachuted into a small town in Belgium on D Day. Always one for the facts, am I.
Anyway, the folks are now keeping up with the League of Melbotis, and I will probably henceforth refrain from using "the f-word".

We're hosting Jamie's folks for Thanksgiving this year, and thusly, we are cleaning the house in a way we have not touched it since probably last June. ugh. It's so gross and dirty. However, it did give me an excuse to sort, file, bag and board comics which have been sitting in piles since July. I am in sore need of additional bags and boards and boxes, which is expensive. That, and I am running out of closet space in which to store the comics. I need to move or knock downt he wall between my office and the guest room to make room for all this hoo-haa.
Curse you comic books... you drain me of my money and my sanity.

I watched Shane while sorting the comics. Man, I've seen Shane probably 5 or 6 times and I still love that movie. I also watched Mars Attacks!, a movie I never really get tired of. Yes, sorting comics takes FOREVER.

I have an exam today. I hate school. I can't believe I'm trying to go back and take classes. I had forgotten how much I hate exams and studying. Bleah.

Kudos to Jim for forwarding this.

Work has been nutty. They just dumped me with a king sized project and are unintentionally throwing all kinds of barriers in my way. Pulled the 11.5 hour day yesterday. Who says working for the state isn't gratifying? At least I know that when Christmas is coming, everyone goes on vacation, so there isn't a snowball's chance in hell I'll be able to do anything even if I want to from December 10th to January 5th.

In the meantime, I leave you with my personal philosophy as followed from the ages of 16-present. It is called The Three-Fold Path to the Glimmering Sea of Irresponsibility and Enlightenment, or, more succinctly: The Way of the Coward.

1) Deny Everything
2) Make Counter-Allegations
3) Run Like Hell

THis three-tiered approach to any hostile situation will always, always, always get you out of trouble. I promise.

The State University I work for gave us all yesterday off in observance of Memorial Day. At least I hope they did. Nobody seems to have missed me yesterday.

With an actual war occuring overseas, Veteran's Day has a greater immediacy than most years. But invariably, on Veteran's Day, I think of my Grandfather, Marvin Ross. He was raised in rural Kansas, and has the kind of stories and background that post-Vietnam kids like myself regard as American myth. He broke horses from the time he was 12, and originally joined a horseback riding cavalry. He served through almost all of WWII, including dropping into Normandy in a glider as part of the 82nd Airborne, serving in Africa (I assume chasing Rommel about), and at some point crossed enemy lines in Italy to go and raid a wine-cellar.

He's the kind of guy who, when he saw me going jogging several years ago, pointed out that I wasn't lugging an 80 pound pack, as he had to do for four years. It's kind of a tough image to live up to. Since the toughest thing I ever did was obtain the high score on Galaga at Pizza Royale in 1983, I'm usually left just staring at the guy as he relates his tales like he's casually recounting an issue of Sgt. Rock (which he might be, who knows...).

My pop is also a veteran, he of Vietnam. But My Old Man has less exciting tales to tell as he was a mechanic and electrician in the Air Force and mostly served as a target for VC while hanging out on the runway in Pleiku. He does know a hell of a lot of funny stories involving airplanes getting blown up and fowled up, which led to my decision never to want to sit behind the stick in a combat situation.

In the end, I feel like a big ol' sissy. That's what Veteran's Day means to me. I get to be a sissy because other folks put on a uniform and go get shot at in the far reaches of the world. So I hope you all took a few minutes out to observe the service these good folks have done for us.

Now for some housekeeping:

I have found two new shows I like this season. 1) Arrested Development on Fox. This show will only get about 8 episodes out before it is pulled, but I hope to catch them all. I was the one guy in America who also believed Fox's Hollywood show Action was one of the best sitcoms of that year.

2) Cartoon Network's Duck Dodgers. Reviving the comedy/ science-fiction of Daffy Duck in space, the one episode of this show I've seen was pretty darn good. It's not Futurama, but I dug it.

other shows I should have discovered, but am late on the bandwagon, and/ or have changed my mind.

1) Mucha Lucha on Kids WB!
2) Randy was right. Teen Titans is worth watching. Everyone ignore my previous comments.


In other news, Jamie, Mel and I may have a brief cameo on The Learning Channel's reality/ game show "Clean Sweep". They were taping an episode down the street from us the day after Halloween and Jamie and I leashed up Mel and went and bought a grotesquely ugly lamp from the yard sale. At any rate, if you see an episode taking place in Arizona, wait until the yard sale portion and you will see Jamie suddenly going into haggling mode (which I had never seen her do), and me standing around looking really nervous that Mel is going to knock me, the camera crew and the tables full of stuff right over. Big lesson: when going to appear on TV, do not bring unpredictable doggy.

The other funny thing was how Jamie and I were primping before going to the garage sale. We were not going to go down there and look like slobs.

Anyway, that's what I've got today. Hope you guys had a good Veterans Day.

Thanks to Jim for forwarding this link. Included are the worst album covers ever to come out of Sweden. He also included this link, with even more album cover gold.